Vueron Newsletter
No. 216
2025.06.27
| Autonomous trucking developer Plus goes public via SPAC | ||
| Autonomous Driving | On board the driverless lorries hoping to transform China’s transport industry | |
| Autonomous Driving | When can we expect to see driverless taxis in London? | |
| Volvo achieves over 1 Mt hauled autonomously at Brønnøy Kalk | ||
| Huge, self-driving trucks roll onto Canada’s most treacherous roads |
1. Autonomous trucking developer Plus goes public via SPAC
- Plus Automation Inc. has announced its public listing via a merger with Churchill Capital Corp IX, forming a combined entity named PlusAI.
- The transaction values Plus at a pre-money equity value of $1.2 billion and is expected to generate $300 million in gross proceeds.
- Funds from the SPAC deal will support the commercial launch of factory-built autonomous trucks powered by Plus’s SuperDrive system in 2027.
- SuperDrive enables SAE Level 4 autonomy with a three-layer redundancy architecture, designed specifically for heavy-duty commercial trucks.
- In April 2025, Plus achieved a significant “driver-out” safety validation milestone and is conducting road testing in Texas and Sweden.
- The company maintains operations in California, Texas, and Germany to support fleet trials and future deployments.
- Plus’s commercialization strategy centers around deep integration with OEM partners including TRATON GROUP, Hyundai, and IVECO.
- Strategic partners such as DSV, Bosch, and NVIDIA are working with Plus to accelerate autonomous fleet adoption across logistics and retail networks.
Plus Automation goes public through a $1.2B SPAC deal to fund the 2027 launch of factory-built, Level 4 autonomous trucks, supported by OEM and tech partners across the U.S. and Europe.
2. On board the driverless lorries hoping to transform China’s transport industry
- Autonomous trucks developed by Pony.ai are currently operating on test routes between Beijing and Tianjin, navigating highways with safety drivers only as a regulatory requirement.
- These vehicles can switch between manual and autonomous modes during different parts of the journey, with drivers regaining control in specific segments.
- Safety drivers report reduced stress and fatigue due to autonomous mode, but express uncertainty about long-term job security as autonomy improves.
- Pony.ai’s leadership anticipates significant cost savings and efficiency gains, especially in harsh environments and long-distance freight operations.
- Industry experts view driverless trucks as a strategic investment to cut labor costs, but caution that full autonomy on open roads and at high speeds remains distant.
- Public skepticism in China persists, fueled by past accidents involving autonomous passenger vehicles, which may slow regulatory acceptance.
- In parallel, Rino.ai has deployed over 500 autonomous delivery vans across more than 50 Chinese cities, with Hefei emerging as a national leader in implementation.
- Rino’s model handles hub-to-local-station delivery autonomously, while human drivers complete the last-mile—boosting efficiency and expanding internationally, including a pilot in Australia.
3. When can we expect to see driverless taxis in London?
- London-based startup Wayve, backed by Uber, is leading the UK’s autonomous vehicle efforts, actively testing self-driving cars on the capital’s streets.
Experts say London presents one of the most challenging environments for AVs due to its narrow lanes, dense traffic, erratic cyclists, and unpredictable pedestrian behavior.
AV systems rely heavily on sensors and connectivity, both of which are hindered in London by poor 5G and degraded GPS signals caused by dense urban architecture.
Analysts predict that only arterial roads like the A2, A4, and North Circular may be feasible for early autonomous zones—not central London.
The UK’s Automated Vehicles Act was passed in May 2024, but the official deployment timeline for AVs has been postponed to 2027.
Cultural resistance and urban policy trends in London, which have actively discouraged car use for over a decade, create additional barriers to AV adoption.
Despite delays in full AV rollout, spin-off technologies from AV development are already in use—such as semi-autonomous features in London buses.
Experts urge a reframing of expectations: the key question is not when AVs will arrive, but where and in what use cases they will first be deployed.
While London leads in AV innovation through Wayve, the city’s dense layout, policy barriers, and connectivity issues suggest self-driving taxis will emerge gradually—and selectively—by 2027.
4. Volvo achieves over 1 Mt hauled autonomously at Brønnøy Kalk
- Volvo Autonomous Solutions (VAS) has autonomously hauled over 1 million tonnes of limestone for Brønnøy Kalk in Norway, covering more than 220,000 km in real-world operations.
- The site employs seven Volvo FH trucks equipped with VAS’s virtual driver, navigating a 5 km route with steep inclines and tunnels between the mine and crusher.
- In 2023, VAS removed the safety driver from operations at Brønnøy Kalk, reaching a major industry milestone in fully driverless heavy-duty transport.
- The autonomous solution is delivered via VAS’s Autona/earth platform, a fully integrated Transport-as-a-Service (TaaS) model covering vehicles, infrastructure, operations, and maintenance.
- A wheel loader operator coordinates the fleet using a touchscreen interface, optimizing the autonomous system without direct human intervention in the trucks.
- VAS emphasizes gains in safety by removing humans from hazardous environments and in productivity through continuous 24/7 operation.
- The platform also collects data through advanced sensors, enabling real-time operational insights and continuous performance optimization.
- Volvo sees this as a scalable model for transforming mining and quarrying, promising improved efficiency, fleet flexibility, and long-term automation benefits.
Volvo’s autonomous solution has moved over 1 Mt of limestone at Brønnøy Kalk with fully driverless trucks, marking a breakthrough in mining safety, efficiency, and scalable Transport-as-a-Service operations.
5. Huge, self-driving trucks roll onto Canada’s most treacherous roads
- NuPort Robotics is testing autonomous trucks on Canada’s rugged forestry roads, aiming to relieve driver shortages and improve safety in a logistically difficult industry.
- The trials are supported by FPInnovations and involve key forestry players such as Resolute Forest Products, West Fraser, and Interfor.
- The autonomous systems must handle long distances, steep terrain, unpaved roads, wildlife encounters, and unpredictable obstacles like falling logs.
- Sensor suites extend beyond traditional cameras and LiDAR, combining multiple modalities to adapt to Canada’s low-connectivity and weather-exposed environments.
- While automation offers solutions to labor gaps, unions and some drivers express concerns over job loss and the oversimplification of complex driving roles.
- Technologies like truck platooning are also being tested in Quebec, though skepticism remains over their practicality compared to analog alternatives.
- Critics argue that automation may be more about cutting labor costs than ensuring driver safety, despite growing industry interest and government-backed R&D.
- The path to widespread deployment remains uncertain, but early feedback from some workers has been cautiously positive in regions hit by both labor shortages and mill closures.
NuPort and partners are trialing autonomous logging trucks across Canada’s harshest roads, balancing safety and efficiency goals with growing labor tensions and technological skepticism.
*Contents above are the opinion of ChatGPT, not an individual nor company
